Sal Mineo
(January 10, 1939 - February 12, 1976) U.S.A.
Actor
The undeservedly 'forgotten' co-star of Rebel Without A Cause, Sal's talents spanned film, stage, and song until his murder in 1976.
 Sal Mineo, was born on January 19, 1939 in the Bronx, New York. His parents Josephine and Salvatore Sr. (who made caskets for a living) emigrated from Sicily. In addition to Sal Jr. there were Michael, Victor and Sarina. He was thrown out of parochial school and, by age 8, was a member of a street gang in a tough Bronx neighborhood.. When he was 10 years old he was arrested for robbery and given the choice of juvenile detention or professional acting school. Naturally he chose the school. His mother, thus, enrolled him in dancing school, and acting school.
Soon thereafter Sal was being spotted in such films as The Rose Tattoo and The King and I. When he was just 16 years old he played the part of Jerry as a boy in Six Bridges to Cross and Plato in Rebel Without a Cause. Five years later he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Exodus.
In 1957 'Sal Mineo' tried to start a career as a Rock 'N Roll singer, he released two singles. The first was Start Movin' (In My Direction), it stayed in the USA top 40 for 13 weeks and reached the no. 9 position. The second was Lasting Love, that stayed in for 3 weeks and reached no. 27. The singles were followed up by an album on the Epic label. In the UK the records were released on the Philips label.
 At age 30, in an effort to escape his teen-idol image, he turned to directing (Fortune and Men's Eyes, successful productions in both New York and Los Angeles), but by the late sixties his downhill trip began.
After a full thirty-two movies he played his last big screen role as an ape in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. He did, though, go on to make a few TV movies.
The night of 12 February 1976, after returning from a P.S. Your Cat is Dead rehearsal,
a neighbor heard him calling "Help! Help! Oh, my God!" and found him in the street stabbed to death. He had not been robbed and a white male with long hair had been seen running from the scene. His killer, Lionel Ray Williams was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1979.
Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder, and Mystery
 An intimate biography of the movie star who refused to live by Hollywood's rules and the true-crime story behind his untimely death. Sal Mineo grew up tough and moved fast - from the Bronx to Broadway to Hollywood, from street crimes to stage plays to an Oscar nomination, at the age of sixteen, for his portrayal of the doomed teenager in the 1955 James Dean film Rebel Without a Cause.
His role in Exodus won him a second Academy Award nomination in 1961, but ten years later he was a movie has-been. As this carefully and caringly researched biography shows, Sal Mineo's talents far exceeded the limits typecasting imposed upon a career that saddled him with the nickname, The Switchblade Kid.
 It also demonstrates that Mineo's decline had less to do with the loss of the baby-face good looks that quickened the heartbeat of teenage girls than it did with his unwillingness to deny his homosexuality.
Still tough, though, Mineo refashioned his career, as a stage actor and director, but he was not tough enough to survive the shocking encounter with the man who stabbed him to death. Investigating the mystery that continues to surround Sal Mineo's tragic death and sifting the facts from the fictions that shroud his private life, this long-overdue serious study of the man and the star sympathetically chronicles the thirty-seven years that made an "erotic politician" and gay icon of a street kid and teen idol.
Rebel Without a Cause (1955, USA)
Director: Nicholas Ray - Starring: James Dean; Sal Mineo
 It is a movie with a strong gay "presence".
Although the film contains no overt homosexuality, screenwriter Stewart Stern has said of the characters: "Plato was the one who would've been tagged as the faggot character. He hadn't shaved yet, and he had a picture of Alan Ladd in his locker at school. Jim was willing to forgo his own popularity to protect Plato."
Moreover, in Gavin Lambert's memoir Mainly About Lindsay Anderson (Knopf, 320 pages) the author states that he had an affair with super-butch Hollywood director Nicholas Ray, whose Rebel Without a Cause featured a dreamy Sal Mineo in love with a sexy James Dean.
As a screen icon for gay men and a role-model for lesbians James Dean is one of the queerest rebel heroes of the century. Lesbian-feminist theorists have described Dean as "the almost-perfect lesbian hermaphrodite," while gay and bisexual men have identified with Dean's brooding sexuality. When asked whether he was gay, the bisexual Dean is said to have given the euphemistic response, "Well I'm certainly not going through life with one hand tied behind my back."
Rebel also stars the late gay actor Sal Mineo as Plato, who during the making of the film, according to gossip queen Gore Vidal, was romantically involved with director Elia Kazan.
Some of his films:
- Rebel without a cause (1955)
- Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)
- Giant (1956)
- The Young Don't Cry (1957)
- A Private's Affair (1959)
- Exodus (1960)
- The Longest Day (1962)
- Cheyenne Autumn (1963)
- Who Killed Teddy Bear? (1965)
- The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
- Stranger on the Run (1967)
- Krakatoa, East of Java (1969)
- Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
- Columbo: A Case of Immunity (1975)
If you want to see more Mineo's pictures, go to next page.
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